Differentiation of Fat Joe's Liquid Promiscuity

these excel charts are absolutely hilarious ... my favorites:

ESPN Sportscenter Commercial

one of my bros stars in this ad (hint: it's not rich eisen or bobby labonte)

It's Official!!

Myspace has officially jumped the shark:

Wanted: Friends for Barbara Walters's MySpace Page

She's butted heads with heads of state, endured the tug o'war between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump, even been mercilessly parodied on SNL – but there's one thing Barbara Walters admits intimidates her: her MySpace page.

"I am now on MySpace," the broadcast veteran, 78, told her View co-producer Bill Geddie on Barbara Live, her weekly Sirius radio show.

"What would bother me is if nobody got in touch with me," she admited. "What if … nobody wanted to be my friend. I would be very depressed."

Checking the computer to see just how many friends she actually does have on her MySpace page, Geddie was forced to inform Walters she has only two: MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson – who just happen to be two of Walters's 10 Most Fascinating People of 2007 to be profiled on her Dec. 6 ABC special.

"Nobody else wanted to be my friend?" said a disappointed Walters. "Nobody I went to high school with? … Nobody wanted to get in touch with me?"

The Hold Steady / Art Brut @ 9:30 Club 11/20/2007

what a fantastic triple bill tonight at the 9:30 club, i'll try to break it down band-by-band:

1990s
this band has been getting a lot of hype across the pond over the last year or so, and they were a fun warmup group ... they sounded a lot like 60s blues-rock / british invasion type of groups, i caught a lot of early rolling stones in their vibe ... their lead singer was shockingly / hilariously bad looking, with stereotypical british teeth / overbite, he was great


Art Brut
i've been listening to these guys a lot over the last couple of years, and i was REALLY impressed by their set ... they had an insane live show which really matched their sing-song/spoken word off-the-cuff punk style ... frontman eddie argos has to be seen to be believed, he's really a force on stage ... eddie's heavy english accent is a little hard to follow at times, and the video projector flashing select lyrics to each song was a great addition to the show ... it's hard to sum up in a blog post, but these guys put on one of the best performances i've seen all year, they just dominated the crowd ... if i was the hold steady, i might have been a little pissed at how much grandstanding they were doing after their set, i felt like the night was over when they stepped off the stage (in a good way)


The Hold Steady

but ohhhhhh, craig finn and the hold steady know how to hold their own

i'm convinced that these guys, if not for the drive-by truckers, would be the best american rock-and-roll band alive today ... i see the hold steady as the northern counterpart (they're from, and constantly sing about, minneapolis MN) to the drive-by truckers ... both groups cut to the heart of the american experience, but just from radically different perspectives

like singing a post-modern "thunder road" or "jack and diane", craig finn of the hold steady has an unbelievable knack for writing lyrics from the perspective of ordinary down-and-out american kids ... craig's cuttingly subversive lyrics are couched in this musical tension between quintessential, anthemic major-chord classic rock and the reckless fuck-it-all style of their fellow minneapolitans (and my favorite band) the replacements

seeing the hold steady live, it felt like watching the bastard child of elvis costello and woody allen fronting the e street band ... craig finn is hilarious, he's just a big set of horn-rim glasses bouncing all over the stage with these jittery nebbish mannerisms

Art Brut v. The Hold Steady
forgive me for getting all music critic on you, but these bands are perfect counterparts ... while art brut combines hilarious spoken-word lyrics with a textbook british punk-rock sound that evokes everyone from the jam to the arctic monkeys, the hold steady puts cutting spoken-word sing-song lyrics with a textbook american classic rock sound that evokes the boss ... i'm not sure who put this bill together, but it was fantastic planning

A Suburbanite's Fantasy of Urban Life

in a story in today's WashPost about the Shakespeare Theatre Company's new Sidney Harman Hall across from the Verizon Center's ticket booths on F Street, WashPost cultural writer/critic Philip Kennicott had a great lede that perfectly encapsulated the Main Street USA Disneyland vibe of Chinatown:

Sixth Street near Verizon Center is one of those curious Washington dead spaces. Only a block away, on the redeveloped Seventh Street NW, there is teeming nightlife, a forest of signs and logos and other enticements to eat, drink and shop. It is a suburbanite's fantasy of urban life -- brand names and bright lights -- but love it or hate it, there is bustle there.

BREAKING NEWS: Lloyd Carr Is Still Alive

broadcaster line of the day:

chris fowler: "lloyd is still alive"

in response to this rambling pile of crap that came out of (who else) lee corso's mouth:

"when businessmen die, they leave money; when coaches die, we leave pieces of ourselves, legacies, every kid we've touched, that's what he [retiring Michigan head coach Lloyd Carr] has done"

Listening: Smart Playlists

when i'm not listening to albums, i'm generally listening to one smart playlist on my itunes, i call it "Radio"

"Radio" is essentially a smart playlist aggregator with about 50 constantly rotating songs that has 10 different smart playlists feeding into it (see infra) ... while it may seem that it's a little heavy on "critic-based" lists, you'd be amazed at how much fantastic music gets funneled into this little thing, and i have a huge chunk of music that didn't get on these lists from my compilation and "no list" playlists

because all the feeder smart playlists are set up to only include songs that i haven't listened to in a certain amount of time (anywhere from 1 week to multiple months), once a song gets played it's kicked off the smart playlist and another gets immediately grabbed ... this way things are constantly refreshed with tunes that i haven't heard in a while

as an example, here are the next 10 songs that this "radio" playlist has queued up:

superchunk - "throwing things"
margot & the nuclear so and so's - "quiet as a mouse"
sam & dave - "when something is wrong with my baby"
the rolling stones - "it's not easy"
portishead - "pedestal"
phoenix - "long distance call"
soundgarden - "4th of july"
smashing pumpkins - "today"
serge gainsbourg - "melody"
joe morris - "lowe groovin'"

-------------

the smart playlists feeding into "Radio"

1) 5 star songs (last listened): a list of songs i've rated 5 stars sorted by the least recently played, right now i have 150 songs in this list, with the most recently listened-to at 7/12/07

2) 5 star songs (least listened): a list of songs i've rated 5 stars that i've listened to less than 5 times total, and haven't listened to in the last 1 week

3) 500 Best Albums of All Time (Rolling Stone): this is a smart playlist that grabs songs that i have not listened to in the last 4 weeks that are rated either 0 (not rated yet), 4, or 5 stars on a playlist i set up with every album i have on rolling stone's 500 best albums of all time list ... this gives the playlist some classic rock flavor

4) Best Albums of the 1970s: this smart playlist grabs songs that i haven't listened to in the last 4 weeks that are rated either 0, 4, or 5 stars from a playlist that has Pitchfork's 100 best albums of the 1970s

5) Best Albums of the 1980s: this smart playlist is the same as the last, while grabbing from a playlist that has Pitchfork's 100 best albums of the 1980s

6) Best Albums of the 1990s: same as the last, but for Pitchfork's 100 best albums of the 1990s

7) Best Albums of the 2000s: same as the last, but i've made individual playlists with my favorite 50 albums from every year of the aughts, and this playlist grabs from those lists

8) Best Compilations: same as the last, but this grabs from a playlist i set up with my favorite compilations (atlantic rhythm & blues; complete stax-volt singles; no thanks! the 70s punk rebellion; left of the dial: dispatches from the '80s underground; nuggets 1, 2, and children of nuggets; etc)

9) Best Songs of All Time (Rolling Stone): same as the last, but this grabs from a playlist that has Rolling Stone's best 500 songs of all time

10) 4 Star No List: this playlist grabs from all the music i've rated 4 stars that wouldn't have been included on the rest of these lists for whatever reason

Listening: Sonic Youth - "EVOL"

i have to admit -- i'm not a big sonic youth fan ... but their trio of albums -- starting with 1986's "EVOL", moving onto 1987's "Sister", and their undeniable 1988 masterpiece "Daydream Nation" -- are simply stunning works of art and encapsulate a pretty incredible creative run ... for some reason i've listened to "Sister" and "Daydream Nation" a few times recently, so i thought i'd give "EVOL" a spin this afternoon ... some things i noticed this time around: maybe it's just all the minor-key melodies, but i felt a distinct goth-rock vibe running through a lot of this album; also, there's some early industrial influences in here as well .... very impressive stuff, but i just tend to like poppier music

read more about "EVOL" here and here

Listening: Elvis Costello - "Get Happy!!"

i've been listening to tons of 50s/60s soul and r&b lately (thanks to the atlantic and stax box sets), and so, apparently, was elvis costello in 1979 ... like his sun records namesake, costello appropriates some of the best qualities of black pop music in creating "get happy!!" ... this album is a real tour-de-force: 20 quick-hitting tracks rush by in a lager-fueled 48 minutes, not leaving the listener with much time to catch their breath

read more about the album here, here, and here

Listening: The Apples in Stereo - "New Magnetic Wonder"

i was so excited about The Apples in Stereo's "New Magnetic Wonder" at the beginning of the year, and while i listen all the time to the lead-off track "Can You Feel It?", i haven't given the whole album a proper listen in a while ... i love the apples in stereo, they put out perfect power-pop albums with great psychedelic flourishes ... this album doesn't top some of their bests like "Tone Sole Evolution" and "Fun Trick Noisemaker," but it shows a veteran band that's comfortable in their own skin, which is becoming increasingly rare these days

RIYL: Islands, Of Montreal

Listening: Andrew Bird - "Armchair Apocrypha"

all too often i listen to an album once or twice, really enjoy it, and then shelve it ... i guess this is one of the main problems with having 10,000 albums on my hard drive ... anyway, i'm trying to make an effort to go back through my favorite albums of 2007 and give them some more spins

first up (my ipod playlists like alphabetical order), Andrew Bird's "Armchair Apocrypha" ... i love andrew bird's last two albums, and this one is just as good, if not better ... bird has taken such a weird path to his current indie stardom, going from frontman of flamboyant 90s swing-revivalists squirrel nut zippers to a baroque-folk troubadour

read more about the album here, here, and here

Listening: James Brown - "The Payback"

ok, i'm in full-on 70s mode now ... listening to another classic, James Brown's "The Payback" ... some fantastic funk on here, and soul brother number one really shows his range across the whole album ... read more here

Listening: Faust - "Faust IV"

this afternoon i'm indulging in some spaced-out krautrock with Faust's "Faust IV" ... it's one of my favorite 70s art-rock albums ... you can read more about it here and here

2008

here's my gut reaction on the 2008 presidential campaign:

hillary is essentially unelectable when pitted against a moderate mold-breaking republican. any republican who doesn't show strong neo-con ties and doesn't quote bible lines left-and-right will siphon off an enormous chunk of male voters who simply can't bring themselves to vote for hillary.

rudy giuliani scares me. i think he's making deals with the devil during this primary campaign that will result in conservative judges and hard-right-wing appointments throughout his administration ... but he will run in the general election as a moderate, and i think he has a good chance of beating hillary (numbers right now are 46 hillary v. 45 giuliani).

obama will trounce any of the republicans. he's exactly what voters are looking for in the upcoming general election: change, a fresh face, etc .... add that to the fact that voters are BEGGING to vote for an anonymous democrat (i think the numbers are 50 for an anon. D v. 35 for an anon. R), and you see why i'm so down on hillary right now

Fancy Man Enjoys Tea

Fancy Man Enjoys Tea

this onion article is great, some of the highlights:

YOUNGSTOWN, OH—Jason Baumer, a fancy little gent who is apparently too good to enjoy a regular cup of coffee, drank a cup of tea Sunday.

........

Baumer's beverage is made with the use of a tea bag, a prissy little package of delicately scented, finely shredded leaves wrapped in a thin gauze and festooned with a bright yellow label tied to a string so that the user need not scald her tender digits in the hot water. Baumer, like all the other hens and dandies known to enjoy tea, must "steep" the drink, which is a term for gently lowering the bag into a teacup holding the hot water.

........

Our precious baby Baumer makes nearly daily use of his fragile porcelain teacup, which he balances between feeble thumb and forefinger to drink his beverage with prim sips. He often places the cup on a special little plate that goes with the cup.

Alabama + Football = Les Miserables?!

quick ---

word association: alabama football

i'm sure the first word that crops up in your mind is "showtunes," right?

so i'm watching the alabama / lsu game and i just heard the alabama band play the downtrodden proletariat anthem "look down" from les miserables

absolutely hilarious

Nick Saban: Traitor

i dislike like the tigers, the tide, and the dolphins, but i think it's hilarious to hear nick saban whine about being dubbed a traitor by lsu fans ... nick saban long ago officially gave up any right to ever complain about his treatment at the hands of fans of his former teams

... and this is a pretty funny story

My Generation

i was reading recently about hillary's college correspondence with a pen pal, and it got me thinking about how the adolescence and young adulthood of my generation of politicians will be recounted

as everyone knows, once something gets on the interweb, it's there forever ... people my age and younger pour their hearts out into the digital ether and document every foible and misstep with alarming precision

i'll be really interested to see how politicians of the first internet 2.0 generation are picked apart by opponents and the media, i'm sure some really brutal (and, hence, hilarious) stuff will surface

Why We Fight

i finally got around to watching eugene jaracki's 2005 film "why we fight" ... i love documentaries of all stripes, and i enjoyed this film, but it fell a bit short for me

building its thesis around eisenhower's famous farewell address in which he warned of (and coined the term) the "military-industrial complex," the film uses interviews with ex-members of military and intelligence communities, leftist intellectuals, and a smattering of neo-conservatives to tell its main story about how our defense industry, think tanks, congress, the pentagon, and the executive branch create and maintain an unstoppable force ... woven into this story are some interesting, somewhat exploitative, stories from various "real people"

like most agitprop pieces, "why we fight" is extremely provocative ... i found my head nodding in agreement with much of the outrage from the film's interviewees and i finished the movie more fired up than i've been in a while about The Way Things Are

you can't exactly expect a doctoral dissertation from a 90 minute film, but jaracki kept the intellectual arguments and historical exposition on a pretty simple level ... if you have a passing understanding of the history of the 20th century, and how washington works, then you won't find any of this stuff shocking ... unlike a michael moore film, however, "why we fight" doesn't have any grand populist pretensions ... it's pretty clear that this movie has been (and will be) seen by people "in the know," a large majority of which who are liberal cynics, like myself ... i wish jaracki had made the effort, therefore, to delve in a little deeper into these issues and put some meat on the bones of his arguments

i also would have liked to have seen more from neo-conservatives, others who support the bush doctrine, and cold warriors who haven't gone soft ... the film may have been less provocative with a greater exposition of the opposing viewpoint, but it would have been much stronger

my other complaint is that the film is ultimately and deeply cynical ... it ends with the story of an air force veteran who moved out to a farm to completely divorce herself from the policies and deceptions she was forced to implement in the pentagon

while i empathize with the feeling of helplessness in the face of the fucked up way our world works, i am also endlessly frustrated with the naive anti-globalization "new left" ... i wish this film grappled with these viewpoints and provided more of an answer than the post-60s-hangover-credo: "fuck it, let's move out to the farm"

Grade: 6.3/10
RIYL: "the fog of war", "fahrenheit 9/11"

Jeff Green's NBA Debut

i recorded hoya superhero jeff green's debut with the sonics tonight, and i'm impressed with what i saw ... here's his final line:

BENCH	MIN	FGM-A	3PM-A	FTM-A	OREB	DREB	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO	PF	PTS
Jeff Green, F	19	1-2	0-0	3-7	0	2	2	0	1	1	2	1	5

just like at georgetown, green's line really doesn't tell the story of his night ... on his first play of the night he had a nasty block of carmelo, and he had at least one more (uncredited) block, one of which on fellow hoya AI that started a sick fast-break ending with a monster slam by wilcox ... green looked very solid on the defensive end and a little out-of-sorts in the quick-strike seattle offense ... play-by-play man mike tirico couldn't stop talking about green, it almost got embarrassing at points

i'm so happy that jeff landed in this situation ... kevin durant draws all the attention, and jeff can hang out in the background and play his quieter game ... he's going to be a fantastic "glue" player, ala the red sox's jason varitek

Lucero / Bobby Bare Jr. @ Black Cat 10/31/07

so i've seen lucero a couple of times and was really looking forward to this show at black cat.

we got there just as gainesville, fl's own whiskey & co were finishing up their opening set. i think it had something to do with the sound guy at the mixing board juggling his dinner while mixing the band, but they sounded HORRIBLE.

second opener bobby bare, jr., on the other hand, was fantastic. i'd heard some of his stuff before, but don't own any of his albums and hadn't seen him live. i was expecting a kind of subdued singer/songwriter-type of set, and we got a shit-kicking rock clinic from an obviously seasoned band. these guys were incredibly nimble, jumping from deep southern rock grooves to light steel guitar touches. i heard influences ranging from neil young to dinosaur jr. to drive-by truckers. it was really impressive.

against that backdrop, lucero took the stage and just never really hit the highs that bobby bare managed to nail. frontman ben nichols kept complaining that his voice was shot, but his notoriously raspy 3-packs-of-marlboro-reds-a-day pipes sounded just fine to me. if that was ben's voice with a torn-up throat, then i shudder to think of how he would sound when he's feeling well. it's not that lucero didn't sound good, but they just didn't hit the peaks that i expected from them after seeing some fantastic gigs with them headlining.

after a solid first set, ben played a few songs with a stripped-down crew of himself and a couple of bobby bare's bandmates. lucero came back and played a sloppy encore set that actually sounded better than their first effort.

the crowds at lucero shows always crack me up. there's so much more diversity at shows like this than most black cat indie rock gigs. sure, it's 99% white kids like at the indie shows, but you got the ole miss and uga frat boys mixing with tattooed punk kids.

Taxi Strike Update

well, the feared taxi strike was a total dud .... this may have been the worst strike i've ever seen ... there were more cabs out tonight then i see on a normal friday night

luckily i caught a bus to and from my destination this evening, but cabs were plentiful had i needed one

Brorein St

While in clerkship exile in Tampa, my bro Dustin found the time to capture this stirring image. Feast your eyes.

Big Buck Hunter

so this evening my friend brian started me on a life-long journey.

it's name is big buck hunter.


this game is absurdly addictive. i highly recommend it.

Vegas Poker

a shot from behind my stack of $5 chips (with a precariously placed $2 chip on top) at seat 1 of a $1-$3 no limit hold 'em table in the caesar's palace poker room in vegas

Taxi Strike!

just a heads-up if you haven't heard yet -- dc taxi drivers are striking on wednesday in response to fenty's switch to meters:

Organizers said more than half the city's estimated 7,500 drivers will be on strike from 6 a.m. tomorrow to 6 a.m. Thursday. Their claims were difficult to gauge, however, because there have been no mass meetings on a strike, and drivers, most of them independent contractors, are represented by several organizations.

but chin up:

Even if half of the District's drivers strike, the city would have more cabdrivers working than Boston, with 1,825 licensed drivers; San Francisco, 1,381; or Denver, 842.

can't wait for those meters!

A Call to Arms Electronic Pointing and Key-Entering Computer Peripherals

drop me a line if you have a blog with its url, i'd like to get a blog-roll going in that vast barren space in the right column

My Thoughts on ESPN

like most people who actually give this topic some semblance of thought, i am endlessly annoyed by espn's entire philosophy.

the latest article by espn's ombuds(woman?) and former nytimes editor le anne schreiber crystallized a lot of my frustrations towards espn:

... [F]actuality has been devalued in 24/7 sports media. If you look at the proportion of airtime and cyberspace devoted to reporting fact versus delivering opinion on ESPN, ESPN.com and ESPN Radio, it is clear that the main function of sports news is to serve as the molehill on which mountains of opinion are built. We don't have news cycles anymore. We have opinion cycles.

espn will show a 15-second highlight reel of an ACTUAL GAME, then engage in a 5-minute debate over whether alex rodriguez will opt out of his contract ... do you remember those weeks where you'd tune into "nfl live" and see 90% of every show devoted to staking out t.o.'s house?

espn comes up with one of these "cycles" just about every week or two, but the worst ones in recent memory were:

mcnabb v. t.o.!
mcnabb's a racist!
joe torre is quitting!
bill belichick's "spygate"!
notre dame and/or michigan hasn't won a game yet!
kobe bryant's "rape"!
duke lacrosse "rape"!

not only does espn focus on these largely meaningless and sensational fixations, but they rarely actually report any, you know, real FACTS about these "stories" ... the most annoying moment of every one of these "debates" is when one of the bloviating talking heads throws his hands up and says "i wish we didn't have to talk about this!"

you know what? you don't have to talk about this crap!! just shut up and play the clips! instead of talking out of your ass for 60 seconds, how about you actually play a clip from an actual game, and then tell us how the play developed or why this stretch of the game was important to its outcome

instead of sticking slavishly to an agenda of pimping certain popular teams or particular "storylines" you developed at the beginning of the season, how about you spend time talking about what's ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the field ... does anyone know that the cleveland browns have one of the best offenses in the nfl this year? of course not! why should they?! it's not like espn would actually take time from discussing why mangenius is 1-35 or how the saints might turn it around real soon

not to get too far afield (shit, this is about 2000 words already, who cares), but many "real sports fans" rip on fantasy sports players because they "don't care who wins the games" ... but people who want to succeed in good fantasy sports leagues are forced to follow actual trends, even if they don't exactly fit into a ready-made storyline

the absolute worst sport for this kind of "stick to the storyline" agenda is baseball, where, outside of a few conscientious journalists on baseball tonight, it's almost impossible to hear about the actual ebbs and flows of a season ... espn creates a storyline, filled with large market teams, and dutifully reports on their wins or losses ... if the pirates get hot for a two-week stretch, or the fourth starter for the twins has a better month than schilling, you'd barely hear a word

you know who i really blame for this mess? the idiot drooling sports dude (yes, i mean men) who only likes hearing about names he already knows and could really care less about what's actually, you know, happening ... it's a comparable demographic to the housewives (yes, i mean women) who watch the morning talk shows and get all worked up into a tizzy about the latest cute white girl to go missing in south dakota while their health care and civil liberties are stripped away

in a perfect market, we might actually have competitors to the beast, but with the monopoly espn holds on the national sports media and sets the sports agenda in this country, it's nearly impossible for other voices to gain real traction ... espn has no viable competitors on television, national radio, or big, comprehensive sports websites, so with this lock-down they can just keep slurping up the lowest-common-denominator viewer with the drivel they put on the air

as you can see, i get a little fired up about this.

one sports tv show that does it right is inside the nfl on hbo ... it features long highlight reels carefully constructed by nfl films and (relatively) thoughtful commentary led by bob costas ... espn's nfl matchup is another informative, sober show (what a surprise, it's also affiliated with nfl films) that largely avoids most of the crap i talked about in this post

i'll end this diatribe with a great quote from schreiber's column:

My concern, though, is less for Gundy or Belichick than for viewers and readers who grow fat on the fast food of opinion while starving for reported fact. "ESPN used to be a place where sports news was reported," wrote one of the many readers who complained about the two Easterbrook articles on Belichick. "Now it's just a factory for controversy. I guess in that way it's just a microcosm of America media in general, but that does not make it any less distasteful."

on that note, back to monday night football on espn!

Bud Light News Team

does anyone else find this bud light ad just a bit unseemly? seems like a light-hearted ode to functional alcoholism.

Ian MacKaye Sighting

for the uninitiated, there's a whole class of people in this city whom we washingtonians refer to fondly as "famous for d.c." ... the term usually refers to media types or politicos (did you see chris cillizza chatting with harold ickes at safeway today?!) about whom people in a less wonky city could care less

d.c.'s rock scene is about as nerdy and insular as beltway politics, so our local music luminaries have that same "famous for d.c." feel

with that lengthy back-story, i was browsing through CDs at crooked beat today with stephanie when i spotted d.c. music legend and notorious kill-joy ian mackaye:


ian was in front of me in line, buying some obscuro vinyl records, while i trotted up to the counter with the new discs from mainstream indie bands the new pornographers and band of horses ... i felt DEEPLY embarrased for not purchasing out-of-print seven inch singles by some defunct st. paul hardcore group

Coors. The Banquet Beer.

you know what's really got my goat? those annoying coors spots that the ad wizards have been playing nonstop during football and baseball lately ... it features this horrible butt-rock anthem urging us punters to not expand our horizons and just reeks of small-minded bullshit ... it also reminds me a lot of The Worst Ad Campaign of the Century ... not a surprise coming from thankfully-not-a-u.s.-senator pete coors



i like jason's take on the ad:

You may be fortunate enough to marry a woman who’ll actually put up with your refusal to change. After 20 years of marriage you’ll no longer be attracted to her because she’s about twice the woman you married. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the “leadership” you provided at home and the fact that you’re about two and half the man you were when you were married. Nope, four squares a day, four to five showers a week, and a one to two dates a year. That’s how you make it to twenty years. Forget the fact your wife has to get her romance from novels and soaps and you never talk.

Verne Lundquist is ON today

veteran sportscaster (and keith jackson wannabe) verne lundquist has been on fire while broadcasting the world's largest outdoor cocktail party this afternoon.

in the span of five minutes verne made a witty reference to tim russert's ridiculous hand-drawn statistics and to the classic "boom goes the dynamite" clip ... this sly bastard always holds himself out as the old out-of-touch guy, but then he slips in little gems like this

well done, verne, well done

Jens Lekman @ Black Cat 10/25/07

so i picked up "oh you're so silent jens" in early 2006 and jens lekman quickly became one of my favorite singer/songwriters

jens combines stephin merritt's baritone, unbelievable knack for melody, and quirky song topics with morrissey's acerbic wit and sufjan stevens' lush orchestral arrangements ... but while sufjan and morrissey can get self-important and annoying, jens always winks at himself and keeps things whimsical ... there is so much great music out of scandinavia these days, and jens sits at the top of that list

anyway, i think "black cab" best sums up what jens is all about:



his latest album, "night falls over kortedala", came out earlier this month and it is (predictably) fantastic

jens has toured america a couple of times in the last couple of years, but has always skipped over DC ... so when i saw he was scheduled to play at black cat, i snapped up tickets really quickly ... i was more psyched up for this show than i have been for a long long time (maybe the shins' first DC show at black cat in early 2004 or arcade fire in their first DC show at 9:30 club in early 2005) ... usually when i get really excited for a show it's hard for it to meet or exceed my lofty expectations, but jens really knocked it out of the park

the washington post wrote:

If the boyish 26-year-old isn't yet a certifiable pop music genius, his inspired performance in front of an enraptured sellout crowd proved that he's at least well on his way.

and summarized the encore thusly:

Set closer "Pocketful of Money" took a reliably horrible gimmick -- Lekman and the audience singing a round, in unison -- and made something truly magical out of it. Even Lekman admitted it was the "most beautiful" version of that song to date and to play anything else would simply ruin the moment.

check it out for yourself:

Bud Light Ad

for some reason i really like this ad:



the kicker is great

You are Broseidon, lord of the brocean.

Welcome to muh blog!!

OK, first things first: who, pray tell, is Broseiden? Well, like a super-sweet episode of Law & Order, this blog's title is ripped straight from the [fake] headlines.

Much like the busty proprietress of a 17th-century Parisian salon (they really went to shit in the 1700s), I shall, in these august pages, lead important discussions on, inter alia, important matters of great import: television commercials, sports, music, politics, wingnuts in Florida, viral videos, the law, Washington D.C., movies, suburban sprawl, et cetera.

Whew. I'm exhausted from writing this meager post. Maybe I'll just take the path trodden by so many bloggers who came before me: trumpet the opening, then get lazy and never update. We'll see.